When you have nothing else to offer voters, there's only one thing to do: Scare them. That is exactly what we have happening right now with regard to the desperate people at the Mexico-Guatemala border and it's what Donald Trump is doing in his Nuremberg rallies.
Watch Pete Hegseth peddle fear to Fox & Friends viewers on Monday with nonsense about how ISIS is hiding in the throngs of families, also a Trump theme.
"You got the president of Guatemala saying to a local newspaper down there just last week, they caught over a hundred ISIS fighters in Guatemala trying to use this caravan or other processes," Hegseth said.
When challenged on that assertion by Steve Doocy, for whom it was even too outlandish, Hegseth admitted it was an unverified claim, but warned that a poison pill in a caravan was too much.
As if Hegseth wasn't enough, Fox "News" put an exclamation point on it with Todd Starnes, who urged radio listeners to treat those desperate souls as an "invading force" committing "an act of war."
Shep Smith took a moment to diffuse the fearmongering of his colleagues, but Lou Dobbs and Judicial Watch head Tom Fitton took care of that moment with a big scary segment of their own.
What sad excuses for humans these jerks are.
This is all of a piece of what Trump and Republicans have chosen to make their closing pitch for why voters should elect Republicans: Be afraid. Of Everyone.
Be afraid of the immigrant, the trans person, the poor person (they'll take your hard-earned jobs, Social Security, etc), even your fellow Americans with pre-existing conditions. Yes, even them, as the administration allows states to offer junk plans and have subsidies apply to them so that the subsidies for people with pre-existing conditions will be lower.
Here's a fact: There are desperate people who have nowhere to go where they feel safe. They have only the idea of the United States as a place they can come and perhaps flee the man who would beat them to death, the gang who kills their boys, the hunger that consumes their children.
Now is when we have to remember and also remind others that these are people. They are people more than zygotes and fetuses which Republicans have no problem lifting up as if they are God's chosen. They are people, they are desperate enough to cross 3,000 miles, and they are not a threat.
Remind everyone you know. These arguments are ridiculous, they're a lie, and it's time to step on them before fascism settles in for a long stay in this country.
